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As medical director of La Clinica Birch Grove Health Center in Medford, Oregon, Dr. Nat Fondell ’11 sees some of the area’s most vulnerable patients.

Many have struggled with substance use disorders, their mental health, gender identity, and poverty.

It’s a population Fondell says he feels “lucky” to serve. 

“I really fell in love with addiction treatment and gender-affirming care in medical school and during my residency,” shared Fondell, who is board-certified in family and addiction medicine. “I appreciated that the patients really wanted help. These were people who were lost and wanted support. It felt like my work really mattered every day.”

Fondell’s entry to medical school was made possible through Dominican University’s post-baccalaureate medical studies program. After graduating from another Chicago-area university with a degree in history and journalism, Fondell found himself at a crossroads, where he considered a path to medical school.

He’d found work in a hospital transporting and discharging patients, and the idea of becoming a doctor became something he wanted to explore, he said. But to be accepted to medical school, he needed a bridge to get him there.

He found it at Dominican.

“There was so much uncertainty and I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but Dominican was so supportive,” Fondell recalled. “Thanks to Dominican, I was able to choose between medical schools, which seemed unbelievable to me as a non-traditional student who didn’t take any pre-med courses before this.”

Post-graduation, Fondell was accepted to the University of Minnesota Medical School. A residency in North Minneapolis and a rotation at La Clinica Birch Grove Health Center led to the work he does today, which also includes helping to oversee clinic operations, ensuring medical quality and advocating for gender-affirming care.

“My hope is that we have our clinic set up so patients feel welcomed, they don’t feel judged and they’re able to talk about embarrassing or difficult things,” Fondell said. “I want them to feel free to tell us about things like drug use without thinking we will dismiss them. That feels really good. It’s why I keep doing it.”

The road for patients in need of an organ transplant can be a rocky one, filled with detours and uncertainty.

At the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center in Arizona, Tiffany Coco MSW ’11, a transplant social worker and supervisor, uses her clinical experience to ensure patients awaiting and receiving organ transplants get the support they need for the journey—and the destination of new life.

“Transplant social work is such a niche within the social work field and something many people don’t really understand or think about,” Coco acknowledged. “Someone in need of a transplant, someone who is in end-stage organ failure—there are a lot of emotions that go with that.”

For Coco, the work is personal. Her mother became an organ donor after she died from a brain aneurysm when Coco was just 15.

“There wasn’t a social worker there when I went through the loss of my mom and was trying to navigate all that,” she said. “I wanted to be the social worker I never had.”

Patients awaiting transplants, as well as their family members, are seen by Coco and her team. The time spent waiting can be long, and while there may be “cautious hope,” the patient also knows receiving the transplant is “not a given,” Coco noted.

Post-surgery, patients still need support in navigating and adjusting to their new reality, as they are at increased risk for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, she added.

“As a social worker, we are looking at the patient from all elements,” she said. “We look at their mental health, their coping abilities. Do they have the ability to cope with this new life change? Are they able to follow their therapeutic medication regiment?”

Coco’s own course to organ transplant social worker was put into motion by Dominican University when she was placed in a 10-week internship at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. Her rotation involved working for a week with transplant patients, which introduced her to this work, she said.

Her professors helped her secure this national internship when such an opportunity was not previously available, Coco said.

“I think some of the best professors were the ones teaching outside the book and helping me think outside the box,” she said. “It was those teachers who really encouraged my innovation and encouraged me to be my authentic self.”

When a patient undergoes open-heart surgery, Julie Fenske ’15 is there to play a critical role.

A cardiovascular perfusionist, Fenske is responsible for keeping the patient alive during the lengthy procedure by operating and monitoring the equipment needed to artificially support the patient’s heart and lungs. The perfusionist also administers medications as needed.

“Cardiac surgery can’t happen without a perfusionist,” she noted. “We’re in every city. We’re kind of the behind-the-scenes healthcare specialty. We don’t interact with the patients, but we’re absolutely necessary for surgery to happen.”

Fenske is making those surgeries happen at three hospitals in Southern California where she is the primary perfusionist for approximately 150 bypass procedures—including pediatric surgeries—annually. She also helps to lead the University of Southern California’s new Master of Science in Perfusion Sciences program, which she developed, and is a clinical instructor of surgery, educating students in becoming cardiovascular perfusionists themselves. It’s the first and only such program on the West Coast, Fenske said.

For her, teaching is a form of service, she explained.

“At the end of the day, it’s the students’ care over a patient that is influenced by what I tell them and how well I educate them,” she said.

At Dominican, Fenske majored in biology with a minor in chemistry as she considered medical school. But then, influenced by her sister’s work as a perfusionist, Fenske opted for this path instead, feeling well-qualified thanks to her science background and experiences gained from �����о���, she said.

“I really sought out opportunities Dominican offered for individualized education,” she recalled. “I was able to get that one-on-one experience with my professors and also develop soft skills in the way of caring and doing the right thing. Dominican helped me work toward being just and humane, as the mission statement says.”

In 2022, Fenske embarked on international service work, joining a mission trip to Nigeria where she helped set up a surgical hospital for open-heart procedures in a rural area.

“The values Dominican gave me helped me pursue that as an opportunity,” she shared. “I feel like I’m in a very privileged situation in life, in the way I’ve been able to pursue higher education. At the very least, I’ve been given an opportunity to make a difference in the world.”

Female military veterans in need of mental healthcare can access it from Dr. Lisette Rodriguez-Cabezas ’06 and her team at the Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital outside Chicago.

Rodriguez-Cabezas is the hospital’s medical director of women’s health and a reproductive psychiatrist. Her specialized training allows her to provide psychiatric care to women experiencing “hormonal fluctuations that might contribute to psychiatric symptoms throughout a woman’s life,” she said. This includes treating patients with depression, anxiety, PTSD and other psychiatric conditions during pregnancy; women who have lost pregnancies; and women with pre-menstrual and perimenopausal mood disorders.

“Doing this at the VA, a lot of people say, ‘Do you have enough patients to see?’” Rodriguez-Cabezas shared.

“They think maybe there aren’t as many female veterans as there are male veterans. But women are the largest growing population of veterans, so we definitely are in need. And it’s a service that’s hard to find.”

In her role, Rodriguez-Cabezas oversees a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatry residents, psychology trainees and a peer support specialist. While psychiatrists focus on medication management and adjustments, the psychologists engage in evidenced-based therapy with their patients. 

Rodriguez-Cabezas arrived at Dominican with plans to attend medical school and says the university “definitely” prepared her to do just that.

“I had the unique opportunity of working with a general surgeon,” she said. “A friend and I got to shadow him and attend surgeries with him. It was an experience that a bigger school may not have been able to offer. … It was an internship that really impacted our education.”

Individualized attention and professors who were readily available to answer questions also had a positive impact, as did her anatomy and physiology courses, Rodriguez-Cabezas said. When she began medical school, these courses became more of a “refresher” because of the foundation she had received at Dominican, she says.

“Dominican is never far from my mind,” she added. “I continue to wear my college ring, and I have my ceramic Dominican coffee mug at work. I get such positive feedback when people recognize it!”

Her post-graduation interactions with Dominican alumnae/i have also made her aware of their shared experiences and connections, Rodriguez-Cabezas said.

“We are continuously learning the ways that Dominican has helped shape people’s careers and their paths in life,” she said.

Help Dominican students become the changemakers they are called to be. Support the Dominican Fund: /university-advancement/dominican-fund

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